Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that President Truman asserted confidence in Russia, that it was not heading toward a war with the West. He also stated that he saw no reason to hold further Big Three conferences, provided the U.N. would work as it should. The Potsdam Declaration was being revised to some degree, he disclosed, especially the provision requiring unanimous consent of the four Allies occupying Germany before any policy decision could be approved.

General Eisenhower joined Byron Price in placing blame on the French Government for complicating the occupation of Germany. The French had opposed the part of the Potsdam Agreement which called for treating Germany as a single economic unit.

On domestic matters, the President asserted that the Administration was ahead of schedule on reconversion. He reported that work-time lost since August equated to only three-quarters of a percent of total man-hours. Unemployment was less than expected and the job of reconversion of war plants had virtually been completed.

Meanwhile, the steel workers in 27 states overwhelmingly voted, by a 5 to 1 margin, to strike for their demanded $2 per day increase in wages.

In Java, the British had completely occupied Soerabaja. Negotiations between the British and Indonesians continued in Bandoeng. The British issued ultimata for certain areas, that Indonesians would be shot on sight.

In Azerbaijan Province in northern Iran, the Insurgent forces which had been believed to be marching toward Tehran had turned away and were instead marching toward Resht, 15 miles from the Caspian Sea, following their occupation of Takistan. They were therefore not now heading toward a clash with Government troops at Kazvin.

In Washington, the Iranian Ambassador to the United States sent a message to President Truman stating that the Russians had prevented Iranian troops from going into the northern part of Iran. The Russians had asserted that the move would likely produce bloodshed and the need for more Russian troops in Iran.

The joint Congressional committee investigating Pearl Harbor received documents which showed that two days before the attack on December 7, Army intelligence, G-2, had stated that Japan's leaders did not want general war. Ten days before the attack, Maj. General Sherman Miles, acting chief of G-2, predicted to General Marshall that the Japanese would move next against Thailand. General Marshall sent an alert to General Walter Short, Army commander in Hawaii, received in Hawaii about an hour before the attack but not physically received by General Short until two hours after the attack.

Morrie Landsberg reports on the sinking of the Indianapolis July 30, on its way to Leyte after it had completed its mission of delivering to the island of Tinian vital parts for the first atomic bomb. Of the 1,198 men aboard, 880 had been lost following a presumed attack by a Japanese submarine. The Japanese had since denied that they had any submarines in the area of the ship and another version had it that the ship hit a mine.

The surviving captain of the ship, Charles McVay, was scheduled to testify in Washington beginning the following Monday. He stated his belief that the ship was struck either by two torpedoes or a torpedo after striking a mine.

Hal Boyle, still reporting from Shanghai, discusses the story of a sergeant who was not really a sergeant and had a lower rank at the beginning of the story. He had been married only for a short time when he entered service in 1942. When he got to Australia, however, he fell in love with another girl while continuing to be in love with his wife. Now, facing discharge, he didn't know whether to return to America to his wife or go to Australia.

"As long as I've been in the Army," he said, "I haven't had to make up my mind, but I'm getting out now and I do have to make up my mind, but I don't know how."

Eventually, the sergeant was called before his commanding officer and ordered, as his last assignment in the Army, to take some classified material back to the United States. He caught the plane the next day and sported a grin in the process. He had left behind the picture of his Australian love on the cot in his tent.

A young woman, 17, in Utica, N.Y., said, "I want my baby back." She had given her baby to a discharged sailor on November 15.

A photograph appears of the 25-year old former bride of 16-year old Ellsworth Wisecarver, along with her serviceman husband, who had stated that all was forgiven and that he would stand by his wife.

After all, who could resist Ellsworth, who made love, according to the woman, as well as many men 35. Whether that included her husband, she did not reveal while in Oroville.

In Reno, Nev., a man from Montana asked a policeman how much it would cost him to hit his wife. Thinking the man was joking, the police officer responded that it would be $50. Whereupon the man hit his wife, was arrested, and fined $50 in police court for disturbing the peace.

Fala was recovering from wounds after an encounter with the equally famous bull mastiff of Elliott Roosevelt, Blaze. Poor Fala, who had been staying with FDR's cousin, Margaret Suckley, had lost blood and suffered several bites, requiring numerous stitches. Blaze was uninjured.

The former First Dog was scheduled to be released from the hospital on Sunday.

You may send Get Well cards, c/o Fala, Animal Hospital, Dog Branch, Rhinebeck, N.Y. Replies, however, may be delayed for awhile because of slow processing of the mail during Christmas.

"Button", from February 10, 1945, is now here.

On the editorial page, "General Hurley's Hand Grenade" comments that General Patrick Hurley's statement regarding alleged State Department sympathies with the Red Chinese was opposed to the reality that the United States was supporting the Chinese Government in seeking to put down the Communists in China. Likewise, General Hurley accused the country of supporting imperialism even though in China, the policy had been to resist British efforts to re-establish pre-war imperialist trade interests.

"Problem for the Living" finds practical the proposed solution to the city's parking problem that a five-story storage garage be erected over the Founder's Cemetery. Scarce space in the downtown area made it a wise step and one which would not unduly detract from the cemetery, except as a potential desecration to sacred ground by covering its airspace with a concrete canopy to house automobiles.

"A Monumental Danger" reminds that the statues populating the land from the Civil War and World War I preponderated to such an extent that many were entirely superfluous and aesthetically displeasing. Yet, once erected, they were nearly impossible to remove. It cites the example of a shaft protruding in Alexandria, Va., right in the middle of the town's major intersection, impeding the flow of traffic, but reputed to be the mustering place for local volunteers before they went off to fight in the Civil War. It could not be removed despite the fact that historians had proved that the spot was elsewhere, near the railroad yards.

It reminds of an anonymous obituary written for General Grant: "He overcame the Confederate armies, but he could never overcome his own monuments."

A piece from the New York Times, titled "Sunday in Grandview", discusses the President's recent sneak visit on a Sunday, lasting less than twelve hours, to see his mother on the occasion of her 93rd birthday, without disclosing the fact to the press, angering journalists accustomed to being informed of every trip taken by the President prior to his taking leave.

Drew Pearson devotes the first part of his column to the Merry-Go-Round, offering that Harry Hopkins, who would pass away on January 29, was not long for the world, that Senator Claude Pepper of Florida had just returned from Europe ready to skewer the Administration's foreign policy, that the O.S.S. had just drawn up a "'plan for an order of battle for a war with Russia'", promising no peace, and that Postmaster General Robert Hannegan, chair of the Democratic National Committee, was concerned over President Truman's handling of both foreign and domestic problems.

Marquis Childs comments on the weakness of the State Department and its unpreparedness to take control of the occupation of Germany as urged by General Eisenhower. State had only thirteen persons assigned to the task of providing instructions to the military on occupation of Germany, Japan, and Korea. So when the military would exit as they desired, the prospect for a vacuum would be ripe.

A pair of Army soldiers stationed on Leyte in the Philippines send along an open letter to Congressman Joe Ervin—within less than a month to commit suicide—urging action by Congress to hasten discharges and demobilization and to abandon the current "Demoralization Plan". They urged that Congressman Ervin, for whom they had voted, get them boats to win their votes in 1946.

Dorothy Thompson discusses the opening of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, commenting that the Nazis were being tried for crimes which were at the time of commission of the acts of dubious violation of international codes, the law thus essentially ex post facto in nature.